


Mirror, Mirror

by Salad Shooter (SaladShooter)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Animorphs Secret Santa 2013, Gen, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:09:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaladShooter/pseuds/Salad%20Shooter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the surgery the Yeerks promised her, Taylor looks at herself for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airshipcity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airshipcity/gifts).



“Bring us a mirror,” the Sub-Visser called in cool clear tones.

The girl called Taylor marveled. She’d thought she’d known what power was, back when lovestruck teenage boys practically fell over themselves just to get her to notice them. Back when she could catch the eye of any of the other girls in her pampered, prestigious clique and be inevitably rewarded with a glimmer of envy. When with the right word to the right person, she could build up the reputation of a classmate—or utterly demolish it.

But this, the note of _authority_ in her voice, the absolute confidence that her order would be obeyed … this was a new kind of power entirely.

And Taylor definitely liked it.

She had a sudden urge to lick her lips and teeth, an act that would have remained below her level of consciousness had she not found herself utterly incapable of performing it. That would be the Yeerk in her head, she remembered. Admittedly, its presence had its drawbacks … but it also came with glorious benefits.

“If you like, I can help you to the bathroom, Sub-Visser,” Yiren 480 suggested. “Then you can observe your new body in full.”

Sub-Visser Fifty-one nodded assent, and Yiren gently guided her limbs—old and new—into the wheelchair beside her bed. Soon enough she would learn to use these limbs, to move about every bit as easily as Taylor had before the fire, but the doctor had ordered her not to attempt independent movement without the guidance of the occupational therapist. And as averse to taking orders as the sub-visser was, she still saw the sense in his advice. This body was to be her home for the near future, so she might as well take care of it.

The sub-visser’s eyes fell on the mirror. Yiren’s statement had not been fully accurate—Taylor could see nothing of herself below the waist. Yet that did not matter, for what she could see … what she _could_ see …

The Yeerk’s formerly ironclad control loosened, and Taylor’s breath caught in her throat.

She was _beautiful_.

Her face, once damaged beyond repair, had been resculpted to perfection. Perfect skin, perfect teeth—she had been lovely before, but there had still been those few blemishes that no one had noticed but Taylor herself as she fussed over her makeup in the mirror. And yet now—her naked face, fresh out of surgery, had a cool, even skintone that no foundation of hers had ever emulated, glowing with almost an unearthly radiance.

Taylor smiled to herself. Unearthly was right. After all, hadn’t it been the aliens who’d produced her miracle?

A line from a very early memory of came to Taylor’s mind then, and her lips noiselessly formed the words.

“ _Mirror, mirror, on the wall … who is the fairest one of all?_ ”

*

The Yeerk herself had momentarily let go of the host brain’s executive functions, giving a measure of control back to Taylor the girl. She let the sensations wash over her as Taylor’s eyes lingered along the strong perfect curve of her jaw, then fell upon her clear sparkling blue irises … and then traveled down to the sleek, shining limb that now rested at her side. That had been the sub-visser’s special request. The reconstructed face had been the Yeerks’ gift to the girl, the bribe that had led her to accept infestation. The arm was the sub-visser’s gift to herself. Her own personal weapon. With its pale plastic sheen, it was unmistakably an artificial limb, a signifier of the vulnerability of its owner—until she released its secret weapon, a noxious spray that could immobilize anyone it touched.

It would take weeks of physical therapy before she would be able to fully use that arm, she knew. Yet already she marveled at the way it was artfully constructed, beautiful even in its naked artificiality. Sub-Visser Fifty-one had a keen appreciation for such things—she might have had a reputation for being one of the most fearsome torturers in the Empire, but she was no brute. To her, the deliberate application of pain to a subject of interrogation was itself an extremely delicate art … something her buffoon of a superior would never understand. Not that she would ever tell that to his face. Those who insulted Visser Three did not live long. But his preferred methods all involved heavy physiological damage, and the sub-visser viewed this as unnecessarily crude. There were plenty of ways to send a person reeling in agony without drawing so much as a drop of blood. She’d spent a lifetime perfecting such techniques.

But right now, her host’s rapturous joy was just as poignant as any anguished cry she’d ever wrought. For the results of the surgery had far exceeded the young human’s hopes, and the sub-visser knew in that moment that Taylor was hers …

… and yet as Taylor’s thoughts turned to her high school peers, and what they would say when she walked through the door with her newly immaculate face, the Yeerk felt equally captivated by the human herself.

“We are,” she whispered with Taylor’s mouth. “ _We are_ the fairest one of all.”

And together, with the human’s irresistible beauty and the sub-visser’s inexorable authority, they would rule.


End file.
